Microsoft Advertising SDK June Update (help)

I had issues updating to this new SDK. I don't know why, but i never looked in the directory it installed for documentation. What an ass i am. Well after finding that and following what it said, i still had issues, only a few new ones. that is because some of the original Documentation is not quite right. so i went looking and found some good stuff.

Here is a great working example of the new SDK.
Advertising SDK for Windows Phone XNA Sample - June 2011

Here is  a link to an excellent set of comments that really helped me before i found the above post.
New Microsoft Advertising SDK June 2011 Update Now Available

Now with those links out of the way. Here are some simple notes to get ya going faster i hope.
1. Remove the 'RotationMode.Manual' argument from the CreateAd method (only mod for that!).
2. Change the  'ErrorEventArgs'  to  'Microsoft.Advertising.AdErrorEventArgs ' (both places).
3. Your AdManager has gone away. If you used visible, then use the 'bannerAd.visible' instead.
4. Change the 'Admanager' declaration to 'AdGameComponent adGameComponent'
5. Change 'Ad bannerAd' to 'DrawableAd bannerAd', as it is now more than it was.
6. Change 'RequestNextAd()' to 'Refresh()'.
7. Now ya gotta declare that component
     AdGameComponent.Initialize(adApplicationId /*"test_client"*/);
     adGameComponent = AdGameComponent.Current;
     Components.Add(adGameComponent);
8. Change your 'AdManager.CreateAd' to 'adGameComponent.CreateAd'

Then you should be ready to go. If you used the "test_client" and also "Image480_80" when setting this all up, you Will be in testmode. Setting test mode is now not nescessary, it is implied.

I hope this helps a few people, good luck and may your Ads make you lots of moolah.

Da Voodoochief

X Marketing within Games

I have no hard evidence of my own about whether or not cross marketing within games works. I do read about several other companies who have made some of their games more successful by this method of advertising.

Now the theory is simple enough. If person A likes the game they have randomly picked up and is enjoying playing it. then it stands to reason that they will most likely enough more of your products. Simple and i also think true. this does not just mean companies like Blizzard or Zynga, it can also mean that little ole indie company, like you or me.

Now i have been doing this X marketing as i term it in my games since the beginning, or at least from the time i got my second game out on the Xbox. I have no evidence that this worked for me at all. I might have some good evidence if in fact one of my later titles had done ridiculously well, and then i am sure i would have sen an upturn in downloads for an older game of mine. Still it hasn't happened yet.

AND yet....

I hold out hope and enthusiasm for this method of advertising. Here's why everyone should do it, compared to traditional advertising methods.
Pros:-
Costs very little to setup
No pay out of your pocket expenses
Don't have to negotiate with anyone for expenses
don't have to go looking for good deals on advertising
Have i mentioned it's real cheap?
You can tailor it to be as intrusive or not as you see fit
Advertising graphics do not Have to conform to set areas

Cons:-
Only reaches the people you reach with each product
Designing a good X marketing screen can be annoying or time consuming
Only seen by those people that click on the option or the credits or wherever it is hidden
Can be a bit gauche when put in front of a players face too much

So below is the one i have created for Cards: En Fugeo.

You can tell i had to get this designed, so people could click on the otion to go to marketplace to download it, or just move on from this page. I have been using something like this for a long time, hidden behind the credits button off the main game page.

Now however i have exciting news....

My latest game uses the Admanager. I use the 480x80 ad bar size and it sits at the bottom of my landscape game screen. Well one of my chums at Massmedia ttold me about an idea to use the bar to advertise my own wares. What? i asked, really? WOW... as the realisation dawned on me, i knew this had to come to pass. I could use the same advertising space that the Microsoft one does. Replacing one of their ads every so often with one of my own. Fabulous. No longer hidden anywhere. I love this idea. I know many people reading this have probably already done this same thing. After about an hour of wrangling my ad manager class. I now have it working. 10 seconds for my own ad once every 5 minutes of real ads. What a beautiful solution, thanks Ben.

Good luck with your Cross Marketing campaigns everyone.

Da Voodoochief

Visibility the missing component ?

I have writeen several posts in my time about being invisible. Or put another way, not being able to get my game seen or downloaded by a lot of people.

This is a conundrum that all Indies and Big companies alike face when putting out products. In this day and age people are being bombarded with advertisements for stuff all over the place. It used to be simple 20 years ago, now with all the connectivity, it is not simple. there are many choices of where you can advertise your wares, but that does not make it simple, as anyone only has so many dollars or time to spend on the task of getting your product seen. you do not have the kind of money that is put into advertising AAA titles, so you cannot go the way of THQ or EA etc.

Now if your product does not get seen, then there is a lower chance to make any sales at all, never mind making it big! Though i do believe there is a chance you can reach just the right person. That person in turn puts something out on twitter or on facebook and a bunch of people pick up on that and whammo, suddenly you have gone viral.

What if you manage to get seen, get on Kotaku or Joystiq or something like that. Well most likely if you are an Indie developer, you are getting noticed for something bad. I will not go further on that description hower. Still, bad press IS press, so maybe it is good. It certainly paid handsomely for one group i know. Back to the point, if you got your game seen, then you have a lot more chance to reach the viral stage, or the stage below it which is genuine interest. good luck on getting to this stage.

Visibility can be achieved in many ways, but they all seem very difficult to actually get going. Advertise, whell how do you advertise to people only on the xbox? Most xbox users i reckon don't set foot on review sites etc for indie games at least. So instead you have to hope that word of mouth amongst friends on Xbox Live will pick up your game and try to beat each other. Then, through their networks you may get enough downloads to make the creation of the game financially viable.

But back to what you CAN do.
Reviews, get them. as many as you can. These are to start off with are your best chance to get noticed. One of these reviews could possibly spring your game into the light, and i hope they do. I also love reviews because they cannot be bought. They should be unbiased (though some are very biased :( ). some sites use forms to submit for reviews, although not my favourite way to do it, it is certainly a way to weed out the lazy marketing guys. This is a good thing for you now isn't it, cos you are not lazy! Other sites will just take a press pack (Yes, always do a press pack). A Few others you might know and follow already on twitter, be nice. They are fans, and even if your game stinks, being seen is more imjportant than a good review. Oh so onto...

What if my game sucks according to everyone else. Well this has not stopped coutless thousands of downloads of vibrator apps for Xblig, why should this top your game from making money? In all honesty, good and bad games are a subjective thing. Which means that not everyone will find your game offensive. So roll with the punches and kep promoting your title. get more reviews and they will most likely balance out. If they are all bad, that again, is not so bad. People love to watch a train wreck every now and again. But use the reviews and what they say to motivate you to greater hights on your next game.

never Retreat, and Never surrendor.

Try hard, work hard, visibility may come. While your game is out there, you can never ever disount it's chances.

Da Voodoochief

Why no Xblig for me

Today i want to talk a bit about my current decision to not be making more Xblig games.

Simply put. They take too long to make and test and so far the recompense has been way too low.

Now i know some people will put anything up on Xblig. Some reasons given are things like
'It's my first project and i wanted to see it published'. Well guess what, ya probably shouldn't have bothered. There are most definitely some good or reasonably good offerings from first time programmers. They are in the minority though. also the ones that showed promise gave up on the good game before the end and just published whatever state the game was in when they 'thought it would pass peer review'. I know everyone has to start somewhere, and i would rather encourage than Discourage. Only the last 12 months as a peer reviewer taught me one thing. Most people did not really want to do what was needed to get a reasonable quality title out.
'I just made this quick to finance my next big thing' - Another group put out stuff that is intended to make money. A lot of my Peers think this is selling their soul, or selling out. I am also of this feeling. What got you into making a game? Cos ya wanted to make money at something you loved, yet you would bastardize those things you love to make some money. I am very fortunate to not be in that position with a paying job that i do. If however i did not have a paying Job, i am sure i would be on that bandwagon, as supporting my family is paramont to me. (dang i have started to ramble on already!). I could list the stuff, but i will name one thing.. Massager apps, Nuff said.
So what about the good stuff? The games i like on Xblig, and there are many. Only I feel the weight of all the other crap tends to help hide the good ones. This obviously includes my own. I will not be bashful about my games, as if you like the gameplay or not, i would hope you would admit to their basic quality.

In A Shooter (my last Xblig game), I spent more time balancing the gameplay (your movement speed and shooting power vs the enemies speeds and fire rate etc), along with the bosses and design/balancing, than i did coding the game. But it feels like i spnd more time just in balancing my games than the majority did on getting theirs from start to finish coding. Even when they are coded well tend to make me feel cheated by poor balancing, or poor jump arcs etc. Spending that much time is what i do on all my games. So if i make another game, i will be in the same position. And again my game will most likely be invisible. As invisibility is the worst thing about Xblig. I worked very hard on some interesting marketing campaigns, and i believe did way more than most on this. However, i cannot reach the Xblig audience. I cannot make even enough money to pay back my artists properly for their time. that all makes me sad, epecially when my games have a conversion ratio of 25% or close too. this means people who try my games like them. Only not enough see them.

So i am out of Xblig until i can make this Indie thing a more full time job. Then i would be able to do smaller games and larger ones as well. Hoping beyond hope that i could get a big winner one day and allow me to support my games making habit.

Next time i will try to post about why WP7.

Till then, i am gone.
Da Voodoochief

Note: this article does not talk about those teams and people that put real effort and commitment into a game and try really hard to make a complete and well rounded experience. These people do exist on Xblig, and i love what they do. However they are in the minority.

WP7 reviewers List needed

The development of my latest game came and went very fast. I am happy with it as it is a game and not some poor little innocent bit of code that does not entertain. The best thing i can say about this game is the fact that it is liked by my Wife. Yes it is true. My wife likes my latest game. Which means i have created the right game for the demographic i was after.

Now i just have to hope that the game can get some visibility, i sure hope so. As that has been the single most important thing missing from my previously released games on Xblig etc.

Thanks to a Peer of Mine Kakcat (on twitter here). I released my game today, as i undertsand that altough i can publish my game sometime after it has released, it is not advisable to do so as the release date when you publish it will actually be the date it passed suibmission. Ouch, thankfully i only missed a couple of days atop the new releases list, so i have fared better than soem other devs.

So now i am not quite prepared for my Big launch, something i was looking forward to. so here i am scrambling to get stuff together that i was all relaxed about before today. One thing i really need is a nice list of Web sites that are likely to review my game. This means a lit of sites and hopefully contacts that have taken the time and trouble to review other Xna developed windows phone games. As i have not done well so far in my search, i thought i would start by creating a repository of the info i Do gather, so all my peers can use the list too. I really hope it is useful and gets the platform more publicity etc.

So here is the link to my new page that i started late tonight.
WP7 Reviewers List

thanks
Da Voodoochief

Touch screens, great for Flies?

I thought i would share what one of my grumpy peers wrote today. Made me laugh, so thought i would share. I also have one of these screens and something similar happend to me, only i couldn't figure out what had happened till later.

Here is the Quote...

Anthony Ball

5:34pm Jun 27

This hot weather has brought out the flies - it is REALLY annoying when one flies on to the PC touch screen monitor and moves the cursor. Just had one fly on to the screen, pulldown a menu then jump to Quit... Good job an 'Are you sure?' dialog appeared!!!

Am I back ?

To answer the Title i am, and i am not.

I have just recieved approval for my new game. This time it is for the Windows phone platform. The new game is called.

This is my first game on the platform, and i sure hope it will not be the last. I will start doing blog posts as i remember to do them and i'll try to do them as often as i can.

Yes, i am still insanely busy at work, working on at present an undisclosed conversion to the PS3 platform. More to come when they tell me i can talk about it. One thing i will say is the that this has been the most challenging conversion i have ever worked on, and i have done some doozies i can tell ya!

So this game has information on my web site, so you can check it out there, also the video we made for promotional purposes is there.

Thanks for reading and i hope to make it interesting as i possibly follow this new path.

More info on why the change to wp7 from Xblig in the next post (i hope tomorrow).

good night.

Da Voodoochief